


Lessons in Love

by ananbeth



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst and Feels, Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Canon, Slice of Life, and a happy ending because let's be real...it's me, it aint always easy kids!, just two idiots figuring out how to be adults and function in the same space, look at me writing something that's not an AU lmao, several slices in fact, with smatterings of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26669560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ananbeth/pseuds/ananbeth
Summary: Percy and Annabeth don't move in together until their senior year of college and it's not as smooth sailing as people think it will be...
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 48
Kudos: 423





	Lessons in Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackjacktheboss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackjacktheboss/gifts).



> sophii and I discussed a while back what P&A's biggest argument might be and surmised that this time in their lives might be particularly difficult for different reasons. so this is a lil look into the problems they face, and how they overcome them. this was a really fun exploration into their relationship so I hope u enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it :)
> 
> thank u sophii for beta-ing and being my cheerleader and co-creating this whole idea lmao ur an angel and ily <3

* * *

_Tell me, if we're gonna do this, are we gonna make it work?_  
_'Cause lessons in love hurt, yes_  
_it's you and me until the end_

* * *

Annabeth holds a few certainties in her life close to her heart. These are unbreakable, unwavering, and unquestionable, in her mind. One: she is the daughter of an olympian god. Two: she will become a successful architect one day. Three: she loves Percy Jackson.

They’ve been through more than most have in their lives, even at the age of 21, near death experiences included. She knows that not many childhood sweethearts actually stay together and build a happy life where they don’t grow into versions of themselves who no longer fit together in the ways they once had. She knows they are still young, too, with plenty of time to mess up. But she also knows that most teenagers their age were going to their prom while she and Percy were battling their way out of actual Hell. So this puts things into perspective.

All of this considered, when they told their family and friends that they would be moving into an apartment together for their last year of college, absolutely nobody was surprised. Most people berated them for not doing so sooner, considering that they had spent most of their time at one another’s places before now anyway.

“I’m really looking forward to not hearing y’all having sex,” Piper comments as she drops a box onto the floor of their new living room. _Living room_ is really a generous term for the box of space opening off from the kitchen.

“Says the queen of abstinence?” Percy teases her, following with his own heavy box which he deposits next to hers. “What the hell is in this?” he asks with a groan as he straightens, pressing his fist into his spine.

This question is very clearly directed at Annabeth so she pats his shoulder as she moves past him through the doorway.

“Books.”

“Fuck sake,” Percy mutters, following her. “Are we opening a library?”

“Yes, didn’t I tell you that? It’s been my passion since I was a child.”

He grabs her from behind, planting a kiss behind her ear that she squirms away from. “That’s not what the ten year plan you have pinned above your bed says. Speaking of, has that thing made the cut? Are we going to be displaying it above _our_ bed?”

Annabeth snorts as she gets herself free of his grasp to start jogging down the stairs - the elevator is currently in use and she has no patience to wait for it. “You know I threw that out in sophomore year.”

“I do. But please know that I will never stop teasing you about it.”

“You’re mean.”

“I happen to have it on good authority that I'm actually a very nice boy.”

“Mhm. Who said that? Your mom?” 

She stops on the corner of the stairs to smirk up at him and he pinches her side as he passes her.

“Grover, actually.”

“Ohhh, right.” She trails behind him. “Someone totally impartial then.”

“Exactly.”

Later that night, after they have moved all of their shit into the flat and have ordered pizzas to thank their friends and Sally for helping them move, they all sit amongst the open boxes and discuss Percy and Annabeth’s relationship over slices of margherita pizza.

“I gotta say, I am surprised you haven’t done this sooner,” their friend, Patrick, tells them. “Haven’t you been together since you were, like, twelve?”

Annabeth laughs. “Not quite. We met when we were twelve. We didn’t get together until we were sixteen.”

“Oh yes, I remember the story. Percy’s birthday, very cute.”

“I predicted it from the first time Percy told me your name,” Sally says to Annabeth, who looks at Percy to catch his blush.

“Mom, please,” he groans. 

“Okay, sorry. I’ll save it for the wedding speech.”

They all laugh and Percy turns to hide his face against Annabeth’s shoulder. She pats his hair consolingly and leaves it there, letting her hand rest at the nape of his neck as she soothes her thumb back and forth over the tight muscles, gently starting to work out the knots. She feels more than hears his soft hum as he adjusts himself so that he can lean his head against her shoulder, pizza abandoned in his lap.

“You two are gonna have to hire a cleaner or something though,” Piper says. “Couple of slobs, the both of you.”

“Oh, we should be able to fit that into the budget, yeah,” Percy comments dryly.

“We’re not that bad,” Annabeth protests and even Sally gives her a doubtful look, which makes her squirm uncomfortably.

“I just think we won’t ever see you again,” Danny, who has his feet in Patrick’s lap, tells them with a beer bottle pointed in their direction. “I don’t know how you two spend so much time together as it is.”

“I think it’s called being in love, Danny,” Patrick comments, squeezing the other boy’s ankle.

“I’ve just never seen you argue,” Danny goes on. “That should make things pretty easy.”

Piper snorts, causing everyone to look in her direction. “Oh, they argue. You just don’t see it.”

Annabeth rolls her eyes. “You make it sound like we’re at each other’s throats all the time. We just bicker sometimes, nothing crazy.”

“Nothing like when you were kids, anyway,” Sally says. “From what Grover used to tell me…”

“Okay, we were kids,” Percy says. “Life was very stressful and Annabeth was very jealous.”

She pinches the skin at the back of his neck, hard, making him sit up as he smiles at her cheekily. “You were the most frustrating, obtuse boy in the world, _that’s_ why.”

He’s laughing still, but she lets him kiss her cheek as he murmurs, “Sorry, babe.”

“See, y’all are adorable,” Danny tells them. “It’s sickening.”

“I think you’re gonna be just fine,” Sally says, confidently. “You’ve been through much worse than sharing an apartment together.”

The look she shares with them both is conspiratorial and a little solemn. Her words ring true and Annabeth is reminded of how lucky they are to even be here, to have this chance to not only live a life and be attending college out in the real world, but to be doing that alongside the love of her life.

She picks up her beer in a toast. “To the future,” she says, and her words are echoed by her friends and family.

She takes a sip of her drink and shares a look with Percy. He is smiling back at her, excitement brimming at the edges of him. This feels like the start of something she has been waiting for since she was a little girl. This is not her first home, by any means, but it’s their first home together. This little apartment, with damp in one of the corners and an oven with only three working burners, and a faulty communal elevator. It’s _their_ home.

She smiles back at him, she can’t wait.

* * *

The thing is, Percy loves living with his girlfriend. He really does. They no longer have to worry about encroaching on other people’s space or taking over the kitchen so they can have dinner together while her roommates sit only ten feet away. He really enjoys walking around in just his basketball shorts without feeling like a dick about it, and going into the bathroom when the shower is running without running the risk of hopping in on Piper.

They can also have sex on the couch, because it’s _their_ couch. Or in the kitchen, because it’s _their_ kitchen. Or the bathroom, because it’s _their_ bathroom.

But really, everybody was right in their general assessment because Annabeth is his best friend as well as his girlfriend. And while they can have sex on the ceiling if they really wanted to, they can also watch cartoons on Saturday morning and turn the apartment into a sparring space by moving all of the furniture to the walls and just know that they are going home to each other’s favourite person.

He supposes they live in that honeymoon phase for the first few months, having moved in at the beginning of the summer and being able to both work without the added stress of balancing this with classes. They have people come over fairly often, including his mom for dinner and friends for parties, which forces them to keep the place in decent order most of the time.

It’s not until the semester starts that things begin to pile up. They start going to his mom’s for dinner on Fridays and the parties die down as everybody turns their focus to school and trying to save some money. Which means they have less guests and therefore less worry about other people seeing their underwear on display, still tucked into jeans after being shoved off in a hurry or lazily before passing out on the bed.

He doesn’t actually think it’s that bad until Grover sends a message to let them know he’s in the city, asking to drop by the apartment as he’s the only one not to have seen it. After the iris message drops out and they are left staring at the white tiles of their shower wall, they exchange startled looks, realising they have only twenty minutes to get this place into order. Both experts in overhauling a cabin before inspection, they are pretty efficient at the job. Clothes are shoved in the laundry hamper and into the wardrobe with abandon, dishes piled into the sink, crumbs swept off the couch and then swallowed by the vacuum cleaner.

On his hands and knees, pulling out a plate with half a slice of gods-knows-how-old pizza on it from under the armchair, Percy groans. “Okay, I think we need to clean this place more often. We’re gross.”

Annabeth pulls a face at the sight of the pizza. “That’s disgusting. This is worse than cabin eleven ever was.”

“You mean we’re worse than the Stolls? Oh, babe. What the fuck?”

She grimaces and checks the clock. “Grover’s late, I’m gonna jump in the shower real quick, okay? Maybe open a couple of windows? I think it’s a little musty in here.”

“Where did that candle go that Hazel sent to us?”

“Our bedroom, I think? On top of the dresser.”

As the water switches on and Percy manages to find a lighter in one of the kitchen drawers, he takes a look around the place. It hasn’t looked this tidy in weeks and he had forgotten how nice it actually can look when a small effort has been made to clean it. With the windows cracked open and the candle going on the coffee table, it feels cleaner than it has in a long time.

Percy is reminded of Tuesday mornings when his mom would clean their little apartment, often bringing some discounted flowers from the shop next to the candy store to be placed in a vase and turning on the radio in the kitchen. He remembers summer breaks, coming out of his bedroom to the smell of cooking pancakes, with Gabe still asleep so he and his mom could enjoy breakfast together in the clean space. He remembers waking up earlier and helping her out, enjoying the time spent together. He’s especially fond of the days that just the two of them would carry all of their laundry down to the laundrette and play cards together while they waited for the machines to finish.

A knock on the door actually startles him out of his reverie and he is already smiling when he opens it to find his other best friend standing on the other side. Grover’s goatee is properly grown in now and although Percy still beats him on height, he’s looking more his age than ever. Back in his old sneakers and beanie which does a truly terrible job of trying to cover the horns on his head, Grover just about passes as a normal twenty something year old. They embrace and Percy realises just how much he’s missed his friend.

“Where’s Annabeth?” Grover asks as Percy closes the door behind him.

“In the shower. You want a drink? We’ve got coke in the fridge, I think.”

“Sure, man. This place is great!”

“Thanks. Make yourself at home.”

He feels an odd sort of pride as he watches Grover remove his shoes and get comfortable on the couch. He moved around so much as a kid that his cabin at Camp Half-Blood was his most stable home for such a long time, then he lived with his mom for the first three years of college. It’s not really struck him before now that this is his first home that’s really his. Sure, he doesn’t own the place, but his surname is on half of the sticker over the buzzer and he exists in a bigger space than just his bedroom, which is nice.

He realises that he never really thought he would have this. He had hoped for a future when he was a kid, but hadn’t truly seen one.

When he returns to the living room, Grover is examining a framed photograph which Percy’s mom had gifted as a moving-in present. It’s a shot of the three of them at camp in their garish orange shirts, Grover standing in the middle of he and Percy with his arms around their shoulders, despite being the shorter of the three.

“We were pretty cute, huh?” he says, tilting the photo for Percy to see.

“We’re still cute, my guy.”

He hands Grover a can just as Annabeth steps out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam. He’ll never understand how she can have her showers so hot and always complains when they’re sharing one. She’s wearing a bathrobe but comes over to greet Grover anyway, wrapping him in a tight hug.

“It’s so good to see you! Let me get changed and I’ll be right out.”

She does just that and joins them a few minutes later wearing blue jeans and a loose t-shirt and Percy genuinely wonders how the hell she can look so cute in literally anything she wears. Her hair has been twisted into a lazy bun which has several wisps escaping the hair tie and her cheeks are still red from the shower but her smile is like sunlight and Percy actually can’t look away as she curls up on the couch next to Grover to ask him for an update on his life.

They listen to Grover’s latest adventures as he finishes his drink and begins tearing into the aluminium can and Percy feels reminiscent of their travels together when they were kids. Minus the near death experiences, of course. This leads to some retelling of some of their adventures before Grover asks for an update on their college courses.

“Anybody who said senior year was easier is a fucking liar,” Percy tells him, leaning heavily into the couch cushions.

Grover pats his shoulder consolingly. “You still working at the cafe?”

“For my sins, yes.” He turns his head to look at Annabeth. “Good thing I have a sugar daddy…sugar mommy?”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“You’re finally getting paid for your services?” Grover asks.

She pulls a face. “Thank you both so much for making me sound like a pimp and a prostitute.”

“Sorry,” Grover says, abashed, as Percy laughs.

“I forgive you. I didn’t get paid squat for my internship this summer, but I managed to work out a deal with the folks up on Olympus, with Chiron’s help.”

“That project is still going?”

“You mean redesigning an entire city for immortal gods? Yeah, it’s still creating some demands, but I’ve taken more of a backseat now. Honestly, most of my focus is on New Athens at the moment.”

“Oh man, I'm so excited about that.”

“It’s gonna be so awesome,” Percy says, beaming with pride.

Even Annabeth, the least modest person he knows, ducks her chin at that. “Well, I hope so. It’s really exciting, it’s just stressful too.”

“At least you’re getting paid now,” Percy points out.

“Yeah, how did you manage that?” 

“Like I said, Chiron helped a lot. Really, we worked it into the proposal for the New Athens project as part of the budget. And the only reason we managed to get that was by advising the gods that we could build something better than the Romans and turning it into a competition. After that, they ate it up and pretty much gave us whatever we wanted.”

“Sick,” Grover comments, lifting the remnants of his can in a cheers. Annabeth laughs and tips her empty can to his. Then, catching Grover eyeing it up, hands it over to him with a sigh. “Thanks,” he says, tearing off a piece with practiced precision.

“We should make dinner,” Percy says, not moving.

“Mm. Or we could order something,” Annabeth suggests. “We’re due a cheat day.”

“What’s on the menu?” Grover asks.

“How about that Tex-Mex place?” Percy proposes. “I haven’t had enchiladas for ages.”

Tearing off some more aluminium, Grover tries to hide his excitement. “Sure, I don’t mind.”

Percy catches Annabeth’s eye to find her smirking back at him. He pulls out his phone to order and Annabeth gets up to grab them all another drink. By the time the food arrives, they haven’t moved from their slouched positions on the couch and Grover is opening the door before either Percy or Annabeth even think about sitting up. The exchange must have been very quick because Grover comes trotting back into the room carrying a paper bag stained with grease on one corner while they both push themselves up from the couch.

“Um, Grover?” Annabeth says. 

“Yeah?”

“Did you answer the door like that?”

“Hm, yeah. Why?”

Annabeth is staring at his feet and Percy follows her gaze down to Grover’s feet - well, hooves.

“Oh,” Grover says, staring at his own exposed hooves. “Oops.”

They bust out laughing and Grover begins fretting over having exposed himself to a food delivery guy.

Wiping her eyes, Annabeth pats his shoulder. “I’m sure he didn’t even notice, bud. And besides, he’s probably seen weirder things in this city.”

“What would he do, anyway? Call animal control?” Percy says, returning from the kitchen with some plates and cutlery which will probably remain unused.

“They’d be pretty confused if they turned up to the apartment,” Annabeth noted.

“Well, if I’m gonna go out, I'd rather it be on a full stomach,” Grover says. “Where’s my enchilada?”

* * *

There’s a side table in their living room, on the left when you walk through the front door. They bought it from a thrift-store the day after they moved into the apartment, it being the first piece of furniture they bought for it. Everything else had been transferred from Annabeth’s apartment or gifted by friends and Percy’s mom, or generally collected over the years. Their bed and mattress was the one which Annabeth had bought the year before, their wardrobe was the old one from Percy’s childhood bedroom, the couch wasn’t purchased until two weeks after they moved in and the kitchen table was one they found on the street outside Percy’s mom’s apartment.

But this side table was their first purchase together for their apartment. It was a sort of garish yellow colour and one of the drawers didn’t open all the way so any letters they tossed in there generally went there to die. It could not be trusted to lean on, as they found out one evening coming home wrapped up in each other and trying to find something to push one another up against. Percy still winces at the bruise he got on his knee from that fall. On top of the table sits a little purple ceramic bowl where they both toss their keys.

Today, when Percy gets home, the bowl is empty. The apartment is also a mess.

He's worked a long shift at the coffee shop today, dealing with one too many unpleasant customers, one of whom insisted that they wanted a cappuccino with no milk. Not no dairy milk, just no milk, period. They had insisted on this order for several minutes while Percy contemplated busting the water pipes in the kitchen so that the shop would have to close. Needless to say, he is tired and still a little irritable and he had really wanted to come home to his favourite person instead of an empty, messy apartment.

Finding no message to explain her disappearance, Percy sends Annabeth a text before shucking off his jacket and hanging it on one of the hooks next to the door. Her reply comes through shortly after:

_I’m so sorry, I thought I would be back by now. I had to come to the library for a book and got caught up. Got here an hour ago so will be leaving soon!_

Percy sighs and taps out a quick reply: _dw, take ur time. See u when you get home x_

_Love you x_

He feels sort of guilty for not replying to that one, instead putting his phone face down on the side table and dragging his feet into the kitchen.

After Grover came over a few weeks ago, Percy had commented that maybe they should try keeping the place in better condition and Annabeth had laughed in agreement. He had presumed that meant an understanding had passed between them, but the following weeks seemed to prove otherwise. She’d been home all day today, and he knows she is working on a big paper for school, but he can’t help but feel annoyed. Last weekend, when she had been visiting Camp to oversee some work on New Athens, Percy had been home - with a paper due himself - and had washed up, cleaned the apartment, done laundry, and bought groceries for their nearly empty refrigerator.

Fine, he is a worse procrastinator than she was, but still.

Reasoning that she had probably got caught up in her work, Percy turns on the radio and empties the laundry hamper into the washing machine. He washes up the sink full of dishes before putting some leftover lasagne in the microwave for his dinner and then sits down at the kitchen table to eat while he waits for the laundry to finish. The apartment isn’t actually in too bad shape and he puts on some music from his phone, glancing at another message from Annabeth: _leaving soon! Grabbing food omw back._ He doesn’t reply this time and turns the music up louder - the neighbours will probably be pissed but he can’t bring himself to care. There are worse ways to be a bad neighbour.

By the time he climbs into bed, after having transferred the clean clothes to the drier and taken a quick shower, he is truly exhausted. When the front door opens and closes and he hears the telltale clink of keys being dropped into the ceramic bowl, he only tugs the comforter tighter over his shoulders. Annabeth creeps into their room and gets changed quietly, disappearing into the bathroom to brush her teeth for a few minutes before returning. The lift of their covers lets in some unpleasant cool air but then her body is pressed up against his, moulding to his back. Despite himself, Percy feels his muscles relax as he lets out a sigh.

Annabeth kisses his neck. “Sorry I’m so late.”

“Mhm.”

“Thanks for tidying up. How was work?”

“Horrible,” he mumbles.

“Oh, babe.” Her arms come around him and squeeze and Percy can’t help it. He rolls over and tucks himself against her, burrowing his head between hers and the pillow.

Annabeth strokes his back and his hair as he melts against her, winding his arms around her and pressing her close.

“I would rather go through Tartarus again than go back in tomorrow.”

Her laughter shakes them both. “Oh jeez, that bad?”

“Yes,” he mumbles miserably.

“What if I come and work from there tomorrow? I can be your cheerleader.”

He laughs this time, unburying his face from her neck and resting his head on the pillow next to hers. In the dim light of the room, she can see the corner of her mouth curve into a smile and the dimple it pushes into her cheek. She reaches up to brush his hair back.

“I can’t imagine you as a cheerleader.”

“Fuck off, I’d be a great cheerleader.”

“Really?”

“Well, only for you.”

“I don’t think your career is gonna be very successful then.”

“That’s okay, I’m not in it for the money.”

He kisses her, unable to do anything else and feels her hum against his mouth. Her leg moves over his thigh, hitching up around his hip and shifting them closer together.

“You’ll really come to the cafe tomorrow?” he asks her.

She pecks his lips again. “Yep. For your whole shift.”

“But you can’t focus on work in coffee shops. You said it’s your worst nightmare.”

“Yes, well. I love you. So I’ll figure something out.”

“I love you.”

Annabeth pulls him in for another kiss, a proper searing kiss, and he rolls over her in their bed. His tiredness falls away as her hands move over him and hold him tight against her and she kisses him again and again. And Percy forgets his bad mood like it had never been there to begin with.

* * *

The following week finds Percy coming home to a similar situation. Except Annabeth’s keys are in the bowl now and she’s sitting on the couch with her laptop on her folded legs and headphones over her ears. Percy has been in classes all day before going over to his mom’s to help her with some stuff around her apartment. Annabeth knows this because he had told her the day before when his mom had asked him. She didn’t have classes today, or any meetings about either of her projects.

“Hey,” she says, removing her headphones and smiling at him. “How’s your mom?”

“Hey. She’s good. You had dinner?”

Annabeth looks down at her laptop and curses. “Fuck. No, I didn’t realise what the time was.”

“You been workin’ all day?”

“Yeah, I guess I have. I had something for lunch though, don’t worry.”

“That’s good.” He walks into the kitchen to put away the milk he’d bought on his way home. “Did you get a chance to do the laundry?”

“Um, no. Did you ask me to?”

It takes him a minute to work up a response. It amazes him how bad Annabeth is at being an adult sometimes. And he’s not a great adult, but he feels like he does okay most of the time.

“You okay?” Annabeth asks when she comes into the kitchen.

Percy nods and pours himself a glass of water, leaning against the sink afterwards. Annabeth hovers across from him, crossing her arms and looking confused.

“I just,” he starts. “We’re not kids, and I shouldn’t have to prompt you to do the laundry.”

“Oh.” She blinks at him, like she really hadn’t expected that to come out of his mouth. “I guess I was just busy and I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Right, but like…You don’t ever seem to think about it.”

Her shoulders start hunching up as her defences come up. “I mean, I’m not your housewife.”

“I know, and I don’t want you to be. But I’m not your _househusband_ either.”

“Okay. But... it’s not like I don’t clean.”

“Yeah, when I ask you to or when I suggest we do it together.”

She sighs. “I don’t understand what you’re mad about, Percy. If you want me to clean up more around here or whatever, then just ask me to.”

He puts down his glass, feeling himself get more annoyed at her. “Annabeth, that’s my point!”

“What is?”

“I’m not- Jesus Christ. I’m not your…dad! Why do I need to ask you to do the laundry or wash up the dishes when the sink is full? Like, don’t you realise that I just do that stuff when it needs doing?”

Annabeth stares at him, dumbfounded. “I…” She lets out a sigh and her shoulders drop. “I don’t know,” she says more quietly. “I didn’t think about it.”

He sighs. “Yeah, that’s sort of my point. Look, I’m sorry. I’m tired, I’m just gonna go to bed, okay?”

“No, wait. Percy, we need to talk about this.”

He looks up at her, feeling tired to his very bones, but nods and follows her to the couch. Annabeth sits facing him with her legs crossed and her back straight, like she’s attending a lecture, ready to take notes. Except she looks down at her hands and Percy does too, watching as she tears off a hangnail.

“I’m…really not very good at looking after myself,” she says eventually.

“I know.”

She looks up at him and smiles abashedly. “Of course you do. I just…I guess I’ve never had to be responsible for looking after a place like this before.”

“What about living with Piper?”

She shrugs. “We had a chore wheel.”

“And at Camp?” he asks. “You were head counsellor of your cabin.”

“Yeah, that I shared with a dozen other people. I guess we had our set chores there and it didn’t hurt that keeping your cabin clean was a literal competition.”

Percy laughs a little, feeling some of the tension seep out of his shoulders. “I guess that’s what we should have done from the beginning.”

She smiled at him, a little rueful. “How come this stuff comes so naturally to you? Our childhoods weren’t that different.”

“I mean they sort of were. While you were living in an alley I was in a boarding school or at my mom’s house.”

She frowns. “I wasn’t homeless for that long. It seemed to last forever when I was in it, but I wasn’t with Luke and Thalia for that long before we came to camp, really.”

“Right. I guess my point is that I was in a normal home for longer than you ever were. Gabe didn’t do anything so it was up to my mom and me to do stuff. I guess it just became ingrained then.”

Annabeth nods, like this makes sense to her and Percy is glad, because he isn’t sure he articulated himself all that well. He’s understanding more about Annabeth’s side of things now though. Neither of them had normal childhoods, but she never really existed in a home as a child who helped their parents with household chores like he did.

“I’ll do better,” she promises. “But, Percy?”

“Yeah?”

“You have to tell me if something I’m doing is pissing you off and vice versa. I don’t want to fight like that when we can just talk.”

He sighs. “Yeah.”

“I know I’m not the easiest person to talk to sometimes.”

“Well, I wasn’t gonna say it.”

She throws a cushion at him and he laughs as he catches it and holds it to his chest, resting his chin on top of it.

“We’ve known each other since we were twelve. Why are we so bad at this?”

“I don’t think we’re bad at it. We communicated, didn’t we? And besides, we’re only twenty one. We’re still figuring shit out.”

He puts the cushion aside and reaches for her. She climbs into his lap, smiling.

“Well, as long as we can do that together. I don’t mind.”

Annabeth smiles down at him, stroking her thumbs over the tops of his cheeks. She dips her head to kiss his lips, lingering and soft. He squeezes her against him.

“Together,” she says.

* * *

They celebrate Thanksgiving and then Christmas and New Years, the first two at Percy’s mom’s and the latter with friends at a bar downtown. Then they are into their second semester of their senior years of college and truly starting to understand what working under stress means. All of their adventures and encounters with gods and titans and monsters just hadn’t fully prepared Percy to deal with staying up all night to write a paper and then work a full shift serving coffee to angry New Yorkers.

He’s stressed a lot of the time, and so is Annabeth, and when they are stressed, they are snappy and terrible at communicating. So there’s a lot for them both to work through. He still loves her, that never goes away, they just get on each other’s nerves a lot. Christmas is a blissful break in which they miraculously have minimal reading and both manage to take time off work and spend several uninterrupted days together in the apartment and around the city. Their friends complain that they already live together and now they’re using their time off to hibernate at home, but Percy and Annabeth shrug these comments off, safe in the knowledge that it has been time well spent.

So they start the New Year with optimism and renewed energy for their classes and their work. Annabeth reminds Percy that he doesn’t need to take the weight of the whole world on his shoulders all the time and he reminds her that in order to function like a normal human, she does need to have at least a few hours of sleep each night. They learn even more about each other in the small space they share together and learn more about functioning together.

For example, Annabeth hates it when Percy uses her expensive conditioner because he “uses too much” and he’s only got short hair so he “doesn’t even need it” which is rude. But he vows to use less. He has complained since they moved in together about finding enormous amounts of her hair in the drain and on the wall of the shower and in the sink, and she is finally making efforts to remove this herself on a regular basis. Likewise, Annabeth had begged him for weeks to make the bed in the morning if he was last to leave it before he actually starts doing so without her prompting.

They had a fight about cooking because Annabeth felt like she wasn’t pulling her weight - which she wasn’t - and he pointed out that she’s a terrible cook and she complained that he never lets her learn because he has to have control in the kitchen and then he called her a hypocrite. Then they had sex on the kitchen floor.

It’s a work in progress and Annabeth can make fettuccine now.

One of the things which surprises Percy so much is how much he can miss her. They live together, for god's sake, yet the feeling of waking up alone when she has left for an early class or getting home to an empty apartment makes him feel inexplicably sad. He spends ninety percent of his mornings in the same bed as her and wonders if they seem like a completely boring couple from the outside for all the time they spend together not really doing much at all. But they are poor students so it’s not like they can go on vacations and expensive dates all the time anyway. They go to the bar and they hang out with their friends and she will drag him around a museum when there’s a discount day or they will lay on the grass in the park until they are sunburnt and Percy is happy. He’s really fucking happy.

If he’s already had all of the exciting adventures in his life already then that’s really fine by him.

That's not to say it’s all smooth sailing. Their second semester brings a lot of stress for both of them, with group projects demanding their time and sanity, random tests, quizzes and arduous papers bringing them both to the verge of tears, Percy nearly quitting his job on several occasions due to wanting to punch several customers in their stupid faces, and Annabeth losing sleep over the stress of juggling school and managing a building project for an entire town.

He wakes one night, startled out of sleep by Annabeth who had gasped herself awake and is already out of bed and pulling on sneakers as he sits up and blearily rubs his face.

“What’s happening?”

“Go back to sleep,” she tells him.

“What? Annabeth, where are you going? Did something happen?”

She’s pulling a hoodie over her head, Percy is pretty sure it’s one of his. “No, I just need- I need to clear my head.”

“Where are you _going?”_

“For a walk.”

“A _walk._ Annabeth, it’s...it’s three am. What are you talking about?”

She turns to him, shrugging a thick jacket on and looking wired and impatient. “Percy, I just. I’m fine. I just need to go for a walk and clear my head.”

He shakes his head, feeling clumsy and slow with sleep still. “Well, I’ll come with you.”

“No.” She sighs, frustrated. “I wanna go by myself. Go back to sleep. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“What, no- Annabeth-”

But she is already out of their bedroom and he hears her grab her keys from the bowl before the door opens and closes. Percy is still sitting amongst the rumpled covers of their bed in his boxers, his brain catching up with what just happened. He scrubs a hand over his face and stands, looking around himself like Annabeth might reappear in their bed and he can go back to sleep, assured that his sleep-deprived brain just conjured a strange moment for him. But the bed is empty and worse, Annabeth’s phone is still on her bedside table, plugged in and charging.

He tilts his head back and groans, knowing it’s too late to change and follow her now. She will already be out of the building and half way down the block and he has no idea which way she will have gone and can’t call her. Sitting on the edge of their bed with his head in his hands, Percy tries not to imagine a hundred scenarios in which Annabeth is attacked by some monster from which she has no weapon to defend herself, or some group of guys decide that she looks like an easy target; a young woman walking all by herself in the dead of night. The city is a scary place for more reasons than the supernatural.

Objectively, he knows she can take care of herself. She is far more capable than most of doing so and he’s witnessed firsthand as she has talked or fought herself out of the most dangerous situations. But still, he worries.

The worst part is that this isn’t the first time she has done this. When she hits a breaking point, Annabeth needs to cut herself off from everything and just tap out. Phone switched off or left behind, nothing but her keys in her pocket as she walks the stress out of her system. He gets it. They have different ways of dealing with their stress, and this is hers. It sort of drives him crazy though. He feels like he can’t be mad at her, when she is already so stressed and he is begrudged to add to that. He also knows that she thinks he is being over-protective and hears the frustration in her voice when she insists that she can protect herself and he doesn’t know how to respond because _that’s not the point,_ but he doesn’t know what is.

In the end, it’s an hour and twenty minutes before their front door opens again and Percy had moved himself to the lounge and pulled a shirt on. He’s pacing when he hears the key in the lock and stops in place as he watches the door swing open as his girlfriend quietly steps inside.

“Oh,” she says at the sight of him. “Hey. I thought you’d be asleep.”

Percy scoffs quietly, checking her over carefully with his eyes as she shrugs out of her jacket and toes her sneakers off to toss them on the pile of their shoes by the door.

“You okay?” he manages.

Annabeth looks at him and nods. She is biting her lip as she inches closer to him. “Sorry I rushed out like that. I think I woke up mid panic-attack.” she half laughs the last part, but it’s not with amusement. “I needed to get some fresh air.”

Percy’s muscles ache from the tension he is carrying in them. “You didn’t take your phone.”

“Oh. No, I was in such a rush I didn’t think of it.”

She is standing right in front of him but not touching him yet. She looks exhausted and a little nervous and Percy doesn’t want her to be scared of him, not ever. So he forces himself to roll his shoulders down and reaches up to hold her face between his hands gently.

“You okay?”

She reaches up to clasp his wrist as she nods. Her cold fingers shackle around his wrist bones and Percy feels himself release a shaky breath.

“Can we go back to bed?” she asks him.

Percy nods and presses a kiss to her forehead before letting her lead him back to their bedroom. She removes her sweatpants and hoodie before climbing under the covers with him, choosing to steal his warmth rather than retaining it from layers of clothes. Percy doesn’t argue. He holds her close to his body and waits until her toes are no longer cold before he lets himself sleep, knowing she is safe and finally able to breathe properly. A thousand things still feel left unsaid between them, but he doesn’t know how to say them in this moment, so he just holds on tight and swallows the worry in his throat until it is buried somewhere deeper where he can keep his mind off of it for a while.

* * *

They continue this way for several weeks and Percy is at times viscerally aware that he’s avoiding talking about this problem that simmers between them. He remembers sitting on their couch and promising Annabeth that he would tell her if he had a problem, if he’s upset or mad about something she does. Each time he remembers and says nothing more, his chest tangles up uncomfortably with guilt. But he also remembers that she had promised too, and she isn’t saying anything either.

It’s not all bad and most days are actually good, but it sits there, lingering. Like an unpleasant and unwanted shadow has taken residence in their apartment and they are both turning a blind eye to it, hoping it doesn’t grow too large. But it does, of course.

In some ways, Annabeth has been running away since she was seven years old. It’s her fight or flight response. But when she had run back then, it had been from a family who made her feel unloved and unwanted. It hurts Percy to think that she responds in the same way to him as she had done to them. Perhaps some instincts are just too hard to let go of. This thought doesn’t take the sting away though.

It’s the week before Spring Break when things come to a head.

They have spent the past week snapping at each other and later apologising with sex rather than words. Percy has had to do a quick turnaround on his thesis after feedback from his advisor and has been pulling extra shifts in preparation for taking the week of Spring Break off for their planned vacation to Montauk. His mom has also been sick. Nothing more serious than a lingering flu, but enough to make him visit her apartment most days to make sure she has food and medication within arm’s reach. He’s tired and worried about his mom and Annabeth, who has been working herself to the bone with no more than a few hours of sleep each night.

Annabeth won't hear his voiced concern, waving him off and insisting that it’s _just another week_ , then they can both relax. But Percy gets the sense that it will always be just another week of pushing herself to the edge, because something else will always come up and there will always be a project or a demand or a reason that she doesn’t crawl into bed until four am most nights. The sight of her bloodshot eyes and shaking hands gives him enough anxiety that he usually can’t sleep until she is tucked under the covers next to him.

Today is a Saturday and his mom is finally feeling better, insisting she is well enough that he doesn’t need to check on her as he normally would. So Percy heads straight home after his morning shift at the coffee shop. Annabeth had been asleep when he had left at the horrendous hour of five that morning and Percy had felt something warm settle in his chest at the sight of her hugging his pillow to her chest as she had carried on sleeping. He had pressed a light kiss to her shoulder, careful not to disturb her, and had crept out of the apartment before the sun had properly risen. The apartment, though, is still as quiet when he returns. The little ceramic bowl is empty until he spills his keys into it.

The apartment is a mess, not surprising after a week of full schedules and late nights. So Percy sighs and turns the radio on as he starts tidying the place up. As he does, he realises his theory of Annabeth being at the library is shot to pieces when he comes across her laptop abandoned at the small desk they have pushed against the window in their lounge. It’s still open and surrounded by her notes and a half drunk cup of coffee. Like she had left in a hurry. He taps the mousepad and is greeted with the lockscreen, a photo of himself at the beach, mid-laugh. Fondness fills his chest for a moment before worry seeps back in. Her phone is gone, which is something, but not entirely reassuring.

Pulling out his own phone, Percy texts Annabeth, and after ten minutes with no reply, he tries calling her. Reaching her voicemail, he leaves a short message wondering aloud where she is and asking her to send him a message when she can. He breathes. It’s not unlike her to take herself out of the apartment alone for a few hours to clear her head. She’s probably gone for a walk and will be back soon. Or at least, she’ll let him know she’s okay. He doesn’t need a location or anything. He’s not untrusting of her to any degree. He’s just worried.

Pushing down the worry, Percy makes a late lunch and then opens up his own laptop to get some work done. He struggles to focus though, finding his eyes drawn every few minutes to his phone, which is on loud so that he won't miss a call or a message, but he still picks it up and unlocks it every now and then, just to be absolutely sure he hasn’t missed anything. When it pings loudly several times to signify some activity in one of his group chats, he ends up silencing the thing again, feeling jumpy and irritated by the noise.

By the time the sky outside begins to darken, Percy has officially let himself shift into worry. He tries calling Annabeth again and grunts in frustration when it goes straight to voicemail. Standing from the couch, he stares at his phone and holds his wrist to stop his hand shaking. He forces himself to breathe. Next, he sends a text to Danny, who is on Annabeth’s course and usually holed up at the library with her most days. Maybe she had gone there to pick up a book and gotten distracted? Danny, however, replies a minute later letting Percy know that he has been at the library all day and not seen Annabeth at all.

He feels too pent up to carry on working so tries to distract himself by cleaning the whole apartment. He tries calling Annabeth’s phone periodically, feeling paranoid and more frustrated each time he is met with the lifeless tone of her automated voicemail. By the time he has finished scrubbing the stain off the kitchen floor which had been there since before they moved in, it is close to midnight and he has still heard nothing from Annabeth. Thinking perhaps that she had been called to Camp or Mount Olympus to handle a situation, he iris messages Chiron, apologising for the late hour, and quickly has that theory shot down. His old mentor looks at him with concern pressed into the lines of his forehead. 

“Are things alright with you, Percy?”

“Hm? Yeah, I’m just...a little worried.”

Chiron nods. “I’m sure she is fine. She is more than capable of looking after herself.”

He is tired of hearing this, from Annabeth and himself and others. He _knows_ she can look after herself. That's not the point. That does nothing to ease the panic in his chest caused by the fact that he has absolutely no idea where she is and no tangible reassurance that she is coming home to him again.

“I’m sure you’re right,” he manages and promises Chiron that he will visit soon before hanging up their connection.

He switches the shower off and stands, running his hands through his hair. He feels so on edge he might scream. Nerves jitter through him like an electric current which he doesn’t know how to turn off and he realises it is not just worry that he feels. It is anger.

He’s so angry at her.

Percy forces himself to get changed and go for a run, hoping this might disperse some of his nervous energy. He knows he won't be able to sleep, and the apartment is feeling very small and close. He starts to write a note to leave on the side table, informing Annabeth of his whereabouts, but can’t quite follow through. She doesn’t care enough to let him know where she is, so why should he?

His run only makes him more angry. Leaving him with no distraction from his thoughts as they rage around inside his head, like wasps, they leave stinging bites with each bump against the inside of his skull. He and Annabeth have been through so much together. They have dragged each other through life threatening experiences and have been separated by circumstances far out of their control. He knows the torture that his disappearance caused Annabeth for all of those months. He faced her fear and anger and relief in one go when they had been reunited. He had spent the months after reassuring her that he isn’t going anywhere; that he isn’t ever going to leave her behind by his own choice and if he is dragged away from her again then he would burn the world down to return to her side.

Percy knows his conviction eased her anxieties some, but he also knows that some of those worries will never completely go away. Because of who they are, _what_ they are. The odds are entirely stacked against them. The likelihood of them even making it to thirty is unfairly low. So many things are out of their control, but this - this is not. This is entirely self-inflicted by Annabeth and he is just so unbelievably angry at her for not thinking, not caring about the worry she is causing him by constantly disappearing on him without a word.

The apartment is still empty when he gets back and Percy stalks straight into the bedroom and then the bathroom, knowing they will be as deserted as the lounge is. The worry returns to him, like a freight train knocking the wind out of him because as angry as he has worked himself up to feel, he’s just as scared.

As his brain helpfully conjures up images of Annabeth in various states of distress and danger, he hears a key in the lock and thinks for a moment that he might be imagining it. But the door opens and in steps his girlfriend, entirely in one piece, wearing jeans and boots and his college sweater. She drops her keys into the ceramic bowl on their side table.

“Oh,” she says. “Hi.”

Percy just stares at her. It’s nearly two am. She’s been gone for thirteen hours. He calculates it in his head as he looks at her standing in their hallway like nothing has happened. Realistically, rationally, it has not been that long. Percy does not feel very rational right now.

“You’re okay?” he asks eventually, unexpectedly even to himself.

Annabeth nods slowly, like she is trying to catch up to where he is. “I’m fine, I- I needed to clear my head, so I went out…” she trails off quietly, seeming to piece things together.

“I tried calling you,” he says 

She frowns and pulls out her phone. “Oh. My battery died.”

The casual way in which she says it brings all of Percy’s emotions back to the forefront of his mind again. He suddenly can’t look at her and as desperate as he had been for her to come home, he doesn’t want to be around her at this moment. Grabbing his keys from the bowl, he moves past her and shrugs into his jacket.

“I’m gonna sleep at my mom’s tonight,” he manages to say. “I have my phone.”

And, without looking back, he leaves their apartment, shutting the door behind him.

* * *

The look on Percy’s face is playing on a loop in Annabeth’s head. She keeps staring at the door, expecting it to open again as Percy returns and the look of outright distress and anger has disappeared from his expression.

But the door stays closed and the apartment stays empty and quiet. It’s tidier than how she had left it and she immediately feels guilty about that. She had left in a hurry, a strange daze which had possessed her to just get out of this confined space. She had been staring at her laptop screen for close to an hour, trying to focus on one thing. But her priorities bounced around in her head, screaming for attention and stressing her out further as she couldn’t just pick one thing to work on without feeling stressed that she was neglecting the rest of the things on her endless to-do list. _One more week_ , she keeps telling Percy. And then what? Does she really expect everything to simply stop after Friday? The demands will continue pulling her in opposite directions and she has no idea how to stop them.

Feeling like she might implode if she had sat at that desk for any longer, she had scooped up her keys and pulled on shoes and left the apartment. She just needed to be away from it all. Needed to ride the train all the way out to New Jersey and back a few times, until she had memorised the patterns on the sticky seat of the old train and her heart had dislodged itself from her throat.

By the time she had walked back towards their block, it was beyond dark and she had no idea what the time was. It had felt freeing and wonderful for a short while, like all of her responsibilities didn’t exist while she lived in this space of not knowing the time and not having access to her emails. She had just wanted that feeling to stretch out and last, knowing that it could not but letting herself hold onto the fleeting freedom of it as she walked heavily up the stairs and pushed her key into the lock of their apartment.

And then Percy had looked at her like his whole world had been pulled apart and messily strapped back together again and it had taken Annabeth a shamefully long time to realise, to remember that she hadn’t told him where she had gone. A glance at the clock on the kitchen wall told her it was well past midnight and Percy’s face told her just how worried he has been for several hours.

It was the anger which shook her the most. The steel grit of his jaw and the tightness of his shoulders as he had moved past her, carefully avoiding touching her anywhere. The tension in his voice as he told her he would not be sleeping here tonight. The implication that he couldn’t even bear to look at her, to be in the same room - the same building - as her. It forced the breath out of her lungs.

Forcing herself to move, she finds her charger on her bedside table and plugs in her phone, watching it intently until the screen flickers to life and dozens of notifications stream in. emotion tumbles through her as she unlocks her phone, reading the number of missed calls and voicemails and tapping on her messages from Percy, of which there are four, recounting the process he has gone through over the past several hours.

_I’m home. Assuming you’ve gone for a walk? Let me know x_

_Annabeth, getting a little worried? I'm sure youre fine. Pls just send me a text when you can._

_Okay, officially worried. And stressed and confused because? We talked about this? Annabeth, im going out of my mind here._

_I know you're probably fine but my mind has been racing through the worst scenarios and Annabeth, i don't understand why you don't think I want to know you're safe and okay. Please be okay. I don't want to know what this world is like without you._

Guilt swarms her chest and sits heavily in her stomach like a physical thing. Her first instinct is to get up and follow Percy to his mom’s apartment, but she thinks about his face and the shape of his shoulders as he had left and retrospectively recognises the need to give him space. The same space she had wanted earlier. Except she knows exactly where he is. She knows he will be sleeping on his mom’s couch with an old blanket draped around his shoulders and his too long limbs hanging towards the floor.

Laying back across their bed, Annabeth breathes in slowly. She can't quite get a full breath in yet, it’s like her lungs have constricted tightly. Her face is next to his pillow and she presses her nose into the material as she manages to breathe a little deeper this time. She wants him here, in her arms and under her hands, where she can reassure his worries and press apologies into his skin. She wants to explain and defend herself. She doesn’t want to be laying here in the dark, alone with her thoughts as they spiral tighter and tighter in her mind.

Annabeth pulls out her phone and replies to Percy’s messages with one of her own, hoping it will be enough. She knows it won't fix things or undo the mess of today - of the past several weeks, if she is honest with herself - but she hopes it can be received as what it is, an olive branch. A white flag.

_I'm sorry, Perce. I love you and im so sorry i worried you. Im sorry for how things have been lately. I love you. I’ll be here when youre ready to come home xxxx_

Annabeth curls up on the bed where she is, clutching her phone to her chest and shifting so that her head is on Percy’s pillow. She doesn’t sleep for a long time.

* * *

Percy doesn’t come home until the following afternoon.

Restless, Annabeth has spent the morning batch cooking food to be frozen for later dates. She is boxing up the last of the lasagne when she hears the front door open and freezes in place. Percy walks in and they both stop, staring at each other wordlessly as Annabeth holds a tupperware container in her hands and Percy holds his keys, the one for their apartment still pinched between his index finger and thumb.

“You’re back,” she says.

It feels like a strange copy of the night before. Emotions less raw but still unprocessed. Annabeth hasn’t felt uncertain around Percy since they were sixteen years old. She hates this feeling.

“Yeah,” Percy says, belatedly. “I’m back.”

He breaks their too awkward and too intense eye contact to snap the door shut and drop his keys into the bowl on their sidetable. They clatter next to Annabeth’s and the noise shakes her out of her reverie, making her put down the lasagne and turn to switch the oven off. Instead of looking at Percy, she busies herself with cleaning up the small mess she had made in the kitchen and stacks the tupperware boxes on the side, ready to go into the freezer when they’ve cooled.

By the time she is done, Percy is nowhere to be seen. She realises that he’s gone into their bedroom and has not come back out again. She wonders fleetingly if he plans to avoid her for the rest of the day. Well, she’s given him last night and the whole morning. He is mad at her and is justified in that. But he can’t ignore her forever.

Drying her hands on the kitchen towel and then wiping her hands on her sweatpants too for good measure, she goes in search of him. Their bedroom door is open so she walks straight in, finding Percy sitting on their bed with his phone held loosely in his hands. He glances up when she comes in but looks away again just as quickly, staring down at his phone which is displaying a wall of text in the form of a news article which she strongly doubts he is actually reading.

Annabeth leans against the doorframe, folding her hands behind herself and pillowing them between her coccyx and the wood of the frame.

“So,” she starts. “Are we gonna talk about this?”

Percy looks tired, tired like she feels. Not just from lack of sleep but from lack of real, genuine rest. He lets the screen of his phone fade to black and doesn’t unlock it again as he looks up to the ceiling and breathes out a long breath before he looks at her.

“I’m tired, Annabeth.”

She nods. “So am I.”

“No, I'm tired. I feel like we’ve been having this argument for months.”

“We haven’t been having any argument, Percy. We haven’t talked, really, in months.”

“And that’s my fault?”

Annabeth sighs, trapping down her own frustration in the face of his. “No. This is on both of us.”

He softens, slightly, letting his shoulders drop a little and Annabeth worries at her bottom lip as she waits for him to say something else. But he doesn’t, so she decides to just dive right into it because she has never really been tactful when it comes to a conversation about emotions and Percy knows that.

“I’m sorry I scared you yesterday,” she says, because it seems like the easiest place to start.

He nods, and she watches the clench and unclench of his jaw for a moment. She’s determined to wait him out this time.

“You can’t do that again, Annabeth,” he eventually says, voice low and Percy is not a possessive person so she tries not to let her hackles rise and is glad she fights down that instinct when he finally looks up at her with wide eyes. “You scared the hell out of me.”

She swallows. “I know. I know.”

He is waiting for her now, so she takes a breath and looks at the framed poster above their bed instead of him. The poster is of the Perseus constellation, so it barely feels like an avoidance.

“I just needed to get out of here,” she says. “And I thought about how you told me to get space when I feel like I need it-”

He looks at her sharply, she sees it from the corner of her eye and meets his gaze. He is shaking his head at her.

“That’s not fair, Annabeth. To throw that back at me.”

“I’m not trying-” she huffed in frustration. “That’s not what I'm trying to do. I’m just trying to explain what was going on in my head. I just needed to get out and I didn’t think beyond that.”

“You didn’t think about me at all?”

She feels frustration building in her chest. At him, at herself, at the words she cannot find to explain herself.

“I thought about you telling me it was okay to get space and I didn’t think much beyond that!”

“Ananbeth, that’s- that’s so unfair. You knew I would be worrying? Surely you knew that?”

“I… I don’t know.”

She knows that Percy loves her. She knows. He followed her across country on a quest he wasn’t invited to and into a deadly labyrinth because she asked him to and into the depths of hell because his loyalty would not allow him any other option. She knows the goodness of Percy Jackson’s heart inside and out which is why she can’t find the words to explain why she still thinks of herself as a little girl running away with the knowledge that nobody would come looking for her.

“You don’t know? How can you not know, Annabeth? You don’t think I love you enough to worry about you?”

“That’s not- I know you _care_ , Percy.”

“Well it sure as hell didn’t feel like that.” He is working himself up and Annabeth can picture the whirlwind of rage that he must have become yesterday in her prolonged absence. “It felt like you forgot I even exist.”

This slams into her physically and pins her to the doorframe. Her fingers curve around the wood as she forces herself to take a breath. The idea that she made Percy feel this way, that her actions had caused this insecurity to raise its ugly and unwanted head when she had spent years demonstrating the depth of her love for him. It makes her chest ache in a whole new way.

“I don’t know how else to tell you I’m sorry,” she tells him. “I can’t undo what happened.”

Percy pushes himself up from the bed and rakes his hands through his hair in a fevered way, leaving the strands pointing in frenzied directions. He glances at her and seems to decide that this is too unbearable and once again decides that he cannot be in her proximity, so begins to storm past her out of the room. But this time, she grabs for him, twisting away from the door frame as she clutches at the sleeve of his shirt.

Percy stops at her touch and half turns towards her. His brow is a fierce line of hurt and his jaw looks painfully clenched. Annabeth waits with her hand gently touching his arm for the muscles to slowly relax into something less sharp, and then she tugs on his arm for real and gets him to face her.

“I don't have to tell you that I love you,” she says. “Just like you don’t have to tell me. Because we both know this. We’ve known it since we were kids, even if we didn’t figure it out for a while.”

Percy’s eyes bore into hers as he searches for something which Annabeth sincerely hopes he finds.

“You’re the most important thing to me in the world, Percy. It was never about me forgetting you. I think it was… I think I forget that I’m someone who-” She sighs again, struggling to form the right words. They feel clunky and awkward in her mouth as she fumbles around them. “I know it was a long time ago, but I suppose I remember not being chased when I ran away. It’s hard to let go of that.”

A long moment passes where neither of them say anything and Annabeth has to actively fight the urge to let anything else come out of her mouth as she watches Percy’s expression soften. He steps closer, slowly, and Annabeth stares up at his face as he inches closer and eventually knocks his forehead against her own. A breath falls out of her, unwitting and she realises this is the most they have touched in at least twenty four hours and immediately wants to wrap herself as close to him as possible.

She doesn't though, the space between them seems too important to breach just yet.

“I’ve been chasing after you since we were twelve, Annabeth. I don't know how else to show you that I'm not going anywhere.”

Annabeth presses her forehead against his and allows herself to reach for his hands. Percy lets her tangle their fingers together.

“You don’t need to convince me, Perce. I’m sorry, I- I’m sorry.”

Percy is shaking his head against hers and it dislodges her so she looks up at him again as he frowns down at their hands. “I don't want to make you keep apologising.”

Fighting down the urge to say that word again, Annabeth squeezes his hands and waits for him to look at her face. “Then I’ll stop.”

He sighs. “I’m sorry.”

Annabeth raises her eyebrows at him and it startles a laugh out of him. Just a small scoff and a flicker of something in his eyes which is calmed again a moment later, but it releases something in her chest. 

“I’m not asking for a monitoring tag,” he adds on and it makes Annabeth smile. “It would just be cool to know that my girlfriend isn’t laying in an alleyway somewhere.”

She nods, sobered again. “Noted.”

“We’ve just...we’ve been through so much, Annabeth. We could still die like, any day. I feel like it’s not crazy of me to be worried about you like that.”

“It isn’t. I worry about you, too.”

Percy looks at her. The iridescent blue-green of his eyes flicking back and forth between hers and she wants to know what he sees there. So often Percy will look at her with a reverence that should be reserved for something sacred and she has to work through feeling worthy of it, has to fight back the urge to glance away from the intensity of him in moments like this.

“I love you,” she tells him, before he has the chance to say anything else. “I don't ever want to lose you.”

“You won’t” he promises, and it feels like this should be the other way around, after everything that has happened between them. But so much of the time when one of them vows something, they know it is mirrored back to them. Annabeth repeats his particular promise back to him with the clench of her hands around his knuckles and the brush of her nose against his as she leans into his space.

They don't kiss. They hover in the space before kissing, with cheeks and noses bumping as their breaths falter and restart like tired machines rebooting and figuring out how to start up again in the right sequence. Annabeth reminds herself of the feel and the smell and the sight of him before she allows herself to taste him again.

Percy is the one to kiss her, in the end, apparently impatient with the build up. He sighs into it and moulds his body to hers, releasing her hands to wrap his arms around her body and hold her closer. Annabeth goes, willingly, touching his arms and his neck and his face as she kisses him with all of the emotion that had built its way up inside her chest over the past twelve hours.

Their movements become frantic as they strive to press closer to one another. Dam truly broken, there is no restraint in the press of their mouths and the frenetic tug of their hands at clothes which feel only like barriers to be torn away. Annabeth is once again pressed against the door frame of their bedroom, but this time with Percy’s body lined up against her, his thigh offering her something to press down on as he drags his teeth against her pulse and she groans out loud, unencumbered by anything as medial as embarrassment. 

“Percy,” she says, breathy, grabbing his face to pull him up. He looks at her, eyes wide as he drinks in the sight of her. “Percy,” she says again, unsure of what should follow.

“I’m here,” he tells her, with his face framed between her palms.

“I know.” Something clicks for her, settling deep inside her body like the unlocking of a dusty box. The hinges creak open and out stumbles her fear, dissipated by the surety of the man standing in front of her, holding her, and giving her promises like they cost him nothing. “I know,” she tells him. “And so am I.”

When Annabeth kisses him, she pours every part of herself into it, desperate to convey this unbridled love, this desire and want and _need_ she has to assure him that she is here to stay. That she doesn’t ever want to leave him questioning what she feels for him. 

They have relearnt each other, in several ways, and it takes time for the wounds created by those lessons to heal over. 

Afterwards, they step into the shower together and let the water wash away the leftover scar tissue from their skin. Holding each other close, Annabeth feels something reset between them and she realises that it is not fate or godly intention or anything else which binds them together. It is by their choices, their intention, their commitment to be the best versions of themselves that keeps them walking on the same path.

She fell for Percy a long time ago, as a kid who didn’t really know what love was. And every day since she first laid eyes on that scrawny boy clutching onto a minotaur horn, she has chosen him and despite everything that might have tried to come between them. She chose to love him. Which is really the easiest choice she’s ever made, every single time. 

Annabeth holds a few certainties in her life close to her heart. These are unbreakable, unwavering, and unquestionable, in her mind:

One: she is the daughter of an olympian god.

Two: she will become a successful architect one day.

Three: she loves Percy Jackson. But also, Percy Jackson loves her, and he’s going to keep loving her for as long as she lets him. For the rest of her life, she hopes.

* * *


End file.
